Navigating Systems: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Immigrant Family Ecologies
Co-editors: Hui Chu & Barbara Thelamour
Purdue University North Central & College of Wooster
Springer invites manuscripts across disciplines for an edited volume to explore the range of systems that work to influence immigrant parents and their children. Although research across disciplines has acknowledged the various ways that immigrant families can be influenced as they adjust in their new countries, there is opportunity to systematically consider the contexts immigrants navigate. Specifically, this edited volume will compile a series of papers based on Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory as the framework for understanding the overlapping and intersecting contexts that influence different populations of immigrants from around the world.
This volume will be organized according to Bronfenbrenner’s “ecologies” or the systems in which the members of immigrant families (e.g., children, adolescents and young adults, couples and families with children, and elderly immigrants) are embedded. The volume will start with proximal systems, including intrafamilial and peer relationships, school, work, and neighborhood environments (microsystems) and how those systems interact with each other (mesosystems). We also seek to understand the impact of indirect environments (exosystems) such as, mass media, social services, healthcare, school boards, and parents’ workplace. In addition, it will examine how laws, policies, belief systems, and culture (macrosystems) both in the host and native countries influence immigrants and their children. This volume takes a global perspective, considering how the cultures of different countries impact immigrant families. Lastly, this edited book will explore the sociohistorical conditions (chronosystem), both normative (e.g., marriage, military service, joining the workforce), non-normative (e.g., wars, natural disasters, economic instability), and how different eras allow or constrain opportunities for immigrants.
There will be two submission stages:
(1) A general statement of interest with a title and 500 word submission will be due August 15,
2016 and should be submitted to Hui Chu (chu89@pnc.edu). Selected papers will be decided by October 15, 2016 and the authors will be invited to submit their papers.
(2) Final papers will be due February 15, 2017. The papers should be 25 – 35 pages in length, including tables, figures, and references. Please send any questions about submissions to Hui Chu (chu89@pnc.edu) or Barbara Thelamour (bthelamour@wooster.edu).